Let’s circle back and address some FAQs

“How do I develop taste?”

Well it shouldn’t be something you force yourself to do. What do you already like? What are you already interested in? Explore that with a playful curiosity and ask yourself what’s good, what’s not good. Have fun

“How do I produce a large body of work?”

A house is built one brick at a time. Make a brick. Then make another brick. Then another. The secret is that you forget worrying about the house and enjoy making bricks. It’s fun because you get to exercise and develop your taste

“I want to produce work but something is stopping me”

It’s usually some form of fear or perfectionism. Your technical skill is not yet good enough to gratify your taste. Let go of the expectation that you have to gratify your taste *today* (or *ever*). Make Crappy Stuff!!

“I’ve made a bunch of stuff but I still suck”

This is a feature, not a bug. Welcome to the creative life! Everybody struggled with this. It’s what made them good. Keep making more stuff. When in doubt make more stuff

“My stuff has gotten predictable and formulaic and I hate it”

Good! Discard it all! It’s all tracings in the sand anyway. Find a new game! Watch different movies, travel somewhere different. Find new things and make new things. You have my permission to start all over again

“My friends laugh at me and insult my work”

Fuck them. Find new friends

“Nothing I do is original”

Nothing is! Renaissance paintings are bible fanart. The bible itself was probably compiled and remixed from existing stories. Everything has predecessors, everything is a remix. You can’t make original things. But you can make interesting things

The iPhone was a remix of the Walkman and the Polaroid. Everything is a remix of other things. Creativity is connecting dots. Find interesting dots and play around with interesting connections https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1085809531420995584?s=21

“I’m afraid of being judged”

Separate the creator-you from your personal identity. You are just the janitor, the custodian of the subconscious genie inside you. You deserve neither credit nor blame for the quality of the work. Your job is just to show up https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1066816254097285120?s=21

I feel like it bears repeating that at the heart of all of this is a sincere love for whatever you’re playing with.

If you don’t love the work (movies, tweets, whatever) then everything downstream is going to seem off, and you might waste years trying to fix the wrong problem

So far I’ve talked about all of this at the individual level. It gets cooler: A lot of the fun of making stuff is playing with other people. A lot of my personal favorite tweets were written in response to friends mucking around

Nobody gives a shit about my best tweets except me and a small handful of close friends but that’s fine!! If I can only satisfy one person in the world with my work, it has to be me https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/918346650677940225?s=21

Never be so busy trying to please other people that you forget to gratify yourself. You are the most important person to please with your own work https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1084561403279634432?s=21

threadblogged: http://www.visakanv.com/blog/smart-writing/